I picked up this book with the hope of learning about the evils of globalization and why we should try to fight it. However, I still don't see the light, even after reading this book. The book takes a definite liberal stance against globalization, but I remain unconvinced. For example, in the chapter on culture, Steger reminds us about how American over-consume world resources. Suppose we fought globalization by cutting off all international trade and immigration in this country- -I strongly suspect that our taste for hyperconsumption would then bound even more out of control, without international opinion or labor competition to keep it somewhat in check. Or would the economy implode, as happened in the Soviet Union when similar constraints against foreign trade were in effect? Back in the chapter on history, Steger states that the calls for international class solidarity amongst working people in the global North (a globalistic movement) went unheeded in the face of nationalist theologies (which sure sounds like a counter-globalistic movement). But then he goes on to say "There is no question that interstate rivalries intensified at the outset of the 20th century as a result of mass migration, urbanization, competition, and the excessive liberalization of world trade." Whoa there! By brushing the issue under the carpet with his "there is no question" statement, Steger leaves me with unconvinced. I want to believe, but the argumentation just isn't there, perhaps because the book is so concise.
I see globalization as involving 2 main issues: marketing and labor. Marketing, whether explicit through advertisements, or implicit through entertainment media, is despicable since it encourages people to consume things that are harmful or that they don't need. Labor, on the hand, is an extremely complex issue. From the building of the US through the age of Industrialization, the US has always suffered from a labor shortage, relative to the rest of the world. Perhaps that's why so many of our inventors worked on labor-saving devices. As a result, American workers are amongst the most productive in the world. On the other hand, in a global market, American workers must compete with workers from all other countries. Workers in many other countries are paid much less than American workers. To be fair to the other workers and allow them to support their families, they should receive compensation equal to their productivity, or else they should at least be allowed to compete with American workers. If an American wants to remain employed while earning 10 times what a Chinese worker makes, the American must be 10 times more productive than the Chinese. Some people point out that many overseas workers are employed in sweatshops, and they try to avoid the products of sweatshop labor. But while living in Dubai, I had the opportunity to get know several Third World citizens who had worked in sweatshops themselves in Bangladesh and Qatar. These people were thankful for the jobs that they had had in the sweatshops, even though it meant working 72 hour weeks for a few dollars a day, sleeping on their worktables, and no bathing facilities. Incredibly, the sweatshops provided them safer working conditions and more reliable pay than traditional jobs in their own economies.
The phenomenon described in this book that disturbed me most was the fact that everywhere, the gap between the rich and poor is widening. To me, that's an indication of capitalism out of control. Even after reading this book, I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories about globalization, or feel that picketing international trade meetings will do anything to help poor people anywhere. Globalization of information, science, and economics is a simple result of the current state of communications technology. What we need, however, is more government controls to curb the worst abuses of capitalism. In the field of labor for instance, perhaps we could require companies that want to sell goods in one country that were manufactured in a different country to meet the minimum labor protection laws of the importing country, on every point except wages themselves. But since money is power and power is money, the people who bought themselves a government post have very little incentive to do this. (And where Steger recommends forgiving Third World debt completely, I think it might be a little more effective to reassign the debt to the corrupt politicians who truly profited from the loans, and go after them instead, with the hope to at least discourage future corruption, if not recover the money to develop Third World infrastructure.)